May 6, 2012 -- 6:58PM, in_my_opinion wrote:

Another step backwards for human rights in Iran. It wasn't bad enough to encourage students to bully and harass Bahá'í chidren as young as 5 and 6 year olds? Now they're digging up bad old ways from the bad old days? What next?


    dailycollegian.com/2012/04/13/documentar...


  

Take a look at Germany from 1933-45 and their treatment of Jews. The Baha'i could be in for the very same sort of ride in Iran.

May 9, 2012 -- 5:39PM, Roodog wrote:

May 6, 2012 -- 6:58PM, in_my_opinion wrote:

Another step backwards for human rights in Iran. It wasn't bad enough to encourage students to bully and harass Bahá'í chidren as young as 5 and 6 year olds? Now they're digging up bad old ways from the bad old days? What next?


    dailycollegian.com/2012/04/13/documentar...


  

Take a look at Germany from 1933-45 and their treatment of Jews. The Baha'i could be in for the very same sort of ride in Iran.

Khomeni's regime came within inches of exterminating Iranian Bahai's. When asked by Western media whether the "freedom of religious practice" claimed by the new theocratic government would extend to Baha'i's, he famously remarked, "Ask me another question". Negative attention from media and ot concerned religious believers and human rights groups kept things from being a total holocaust.

  Baha'i's have always been persecuted in Islamic countries beacuse they are simply seen as heretics. Due to its structure, Islam is remarkably impervious to heresy. the requirements to become a Muslim are quite simple Heterodox groups such as Sufi's are tolerated, because despite some obvious Indian influences, they can and do honestly make the same testimony of faith and praxis as every other Muslim. Since the Bahai's claim that their founder is essentially the return of Muhammed while supplying no objective evidence but their founder's claim, they don't get the heterodoxy pass and go right to the head of the line as heretics.

   Religious persecution of any type is intolerable, in my opinion, especially of those who seek to harm none and acknowledge the underlying unity of humankind. Any dialog with Iran on the governemental level needs to address treatment of Baha'i's, Ahmaddiya, Zoroastrians and other religious minorities in Iran as a major subject for bargaining and allowing them to begin to cease being a rogue theocratic state and join the rest of humanity

May 18, 2012 -- 6:13PM, chevy956 wrote:

Khomeni's regime came within inches of exterminating Iranian Bahai's. When asked by Western media whether the "freedom of religious practice" claimed by the new theocratic government would extend to Baha'i's, he famously remarked, "Ask me another question". Negative attention from media and ot concerned religious believers and human rights groups kept things from being a total holocaust.

  Baha'i's have always been persecuted in Islamic countries beacuse they are simply seen as heretics. Due to its structure, Islam is remarkably impervious to heresy.

There's more to it than that. We are seen to be acting on our beliefs in equality of women and men, the harmony of science and religion, not having clergy, being forbidden fanaticism/asceticism/monasticism, etc. These they find threatening to both their worldview and their own authority as clergimen/experts who they think should run their country and lord it over their citizenry.

the requirements to become a Muslim are quite simple Heterodox groups such as Sufi's are tolerated

Ask the Iranian Sufi about that toleration and you will get a different statement. They suffer a great deal in Iran.

, because despite some obvious Indian influences, they can and do honestly make the same testimony of faith and praxis as every other Muslim.

We can, and lovingly do, make the same "testimony of faith" - the Shahada, because we believe in the Oneness of God and the Major Prophethood of Muhammad (to their consternation, it may be added; because they have had to resort to trying to force us insult the Founder of our Faith when they are torturing us.) We do have our own practices, though; you're right.

Since the Bahai's claim that their founder is essentially the return of Muhammed while supplying no objective evidence but their founder's claim, they don't get the heterodoxy pass and go right to the head of the line as heretics.

Objectivity is in the eye of the beholder. What would you consider objective evidence of that Claim? A full third of the Qur'án can, and has been, used to support it. There is more Tradition and Text in Islam for eschatological investigation in regards to the Bahá'í Faith than from any other source.

That isn't even considering three thousand known Shi'ih Clergy who gave their lives as martyrs in Iran after converting; refusing politely, to accept the freedom, wealth and honors that a simple recantation would have given them. It was in the earliest days of the Faith and is as objective as testimony gets, in Islam.

Since 1979 over two hundred have have been martyred and many are unjustly imprisoned even now.

   Religious persecution of any type is intolerable, in my opinion, especially of those who seek to harm none and acknowledge the underlying unity of humankind. Any dialog with Iran on the governemental level needs to address treatment of Baha'i's, Ahmaddiya, Zoroastrians and other religious minorities in Iran as a major subject for bargaining and allowing them to begin to cease being a rogue theocratic state and join the rest of humanity

Completely agree. Please, forgive the tendency to tendentiousness; it is a tender subject to see oppression of the innocent.

They're lucky we're not still only Bábís or even Muslims (in the common sense) and that one of our prohibitions is that Jihad is forbidden to us. We are told by our Scripture to prefer our own death, to taking the life of another. We are not even allowed to strike or wound!

On the other hand they should be pitied when they have to face God for breaking His commandment that "there is no compulsion in religion". All their excuses will count for nothing.

They are blessed that God is the All-Merciful but they may be forgetting His Justice.